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 a short distance from where a group were resting, having come to the end of their rows. A few were laughing, but most of them were serious. Suddenly, as Dr. Tansey and Bennet watched them interestedly, there seemed to rise from the ground itself a rumbling, rounded harmony. Both men turned, mystified, from one side to the other, looking off in the distance wondering if the strains came from some home in which there was an organ. The chauffeur, who had been silent throughout the ride offered, as he tinkered with his engine, an explanation; "They're singing," he said, lifting his head in the direction of the grouped laborers.

The two men could not understand the words, which were pronounced with an accent, suggestive of a French patois and an English inflection; a characteristic of all speech in the vicinity of Charleston. The music, however, was marvelous. To Dr. Tansey it was like the prelude to an offertory played by some master musician on a great organ. The blending of the voices was such as to make the music seem like some weird paean, each group of tones standing out just enough to make the drum of the ear quiver with the sound which brought delight to the hearers. Dr. Tansey and Bennet studied the singers, their eyes turning first from those producing the bass tones to those carrying the melody.

There was a haunting, semi-sad, plaintive shade to the song, with here and there the soprano of the women and the altos rising above the other voices while the lower tones seemed to moan their way from the diaphragms of